Hey, Here's A Pretty 
Novel Idea About The Whole 
"Literary Agency Bio 
Said Obama Born In Kenya" 
Thing: 

Maybe that literary agency's official bio of Obama from 1991 to 2007 said Obama was born in Kenya said that because......just maybe....Obama claimed it?  


Just throwing that out there.  Maybe the subsequent printings & website updates through the years all contained the 'born in Kenya' statement because Obama decided it might help him financially & socially if he was 'The International' instead of just American.  


I'm not a Birther.  Never have been.  The angle I'm looking at here is if Obama pulled an 'Elizabeth Warren' by seeking professional advancement by misrepresenting his place of birth.  


Two reasons I'm thinking this: 

1. Maraniss' new biography in which he casts Obama's college years in a completely different light when he reveals for much of his college days Obama hung out with international students - mostly Pakistani - and sought to fit in with them as an international outsider.  Not until he got intensely interested in a political future for himself as his college days drew to a close does Obama suddenly get interested in crafting an American identity for himself.  

2.  Obama's already demonstrated in his autobiographies that he'll play fast and loose with the truth to put a good narrative out there for others to make himself look as appealing as possible.  The composite girlfriends are just the latest examples of this.  


In that window of time from the end of his college days to the time he got serious about running for US political office, could Obama have gone around for this period of time telling certain people when it suited him that he was born in Kenya?  And were the literary agents promoting his forthcoming book people he would make such a claim to? 

This seems more reasonable than Obama never bothering to read - and then correct - one of the first things ever put in print to introduce himself publicly.  If he ever saw this bio, and had not told anybody this claim of having been born in Kenya, it would have instantly leaped out at him.  


If Obama himself didn't tell someone this, we're left to wonder how someone else came to decide to put Kenya down as his birthplace.  Who does that? "I have no idea where this guy was born. What the hell.....I'll just make it up....Kenya it is!"  


Obama wouldn't be the first person caught embellishing his past for some sort of professional advancement.